


Of the Viridian

by long_love_the_king



Category: Pocket Monsters SPECIAL | Pokemon Adventures
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-14
Updated: 2020-03-14
Packaged: 2021-03-01 05:15:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,121
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23139850
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/long_love_the_king/pseuds/long_love_the_king
Summary: In a few hours he will be thirty years old. Yellow, smiling again like they have all the answers and don't plan to give them out, will be twenty. Some kid, somewhere, will be ten years old and able to talk with Pokémon.Here, somewhere around here, just about now, another Viridian child is joining their ranks. Lance and Yellow are coming to see her.
Relationships: Wataru | Lance & Yellow
Comments: 3
Kudos: 23





	Of the Viridian

Clair is a silhouette against a backdrop of moonlight. "Some kid asked for you."

He says, "that's not very informative," but there are only two kids in the world that he can imagine paying him a visit and Clair is fond of Silver, so Lance finds himself once again thinking about the straw hat.

**

Lance circles around them, stupid with caution, but he can't see any seams where a disguise would come off. As far as he can tell it _is_ Yellow of the Viridian forest. It's no relief at all.

Talking to the other guy might have been easier. It hasn't been that long since Lance has seen him and it would be easier to break the ice. Any new disguises? Any new torture techniques? Yellow wouldn't care about those. Yellow he had not seen in years.

Yellow says nothing as he fidgets around them. Someone must have told them about Petrel, though, because they don't seem to think Lance is doing something strange, don’t move at all until he steps away. After a few seconds' wait they shrug like Lance's mind is all made up and walk up to him. He doesn't know what they're looking for, inspecting his face too closely in turn.They look too serious. Maybe they’ve finally decided he’s gone on doing nothing for too long. Maybe they’ve come to finally tell him, like he didn’t already know, that he hasn’t done enough. He wonders what their voice sounds like.

"Huh, you don't really look all that wrinkled.”

He waits for that to make sense. It doesn’t. "...what."

Yellow _grins_. 

**

No one could blame Lance for forgetting. Clair does, but Clair is family, and her silent judging isn't that different from Silver's own-- because he has other people to fill it for him. 

March 3rd. Usually it's Tamato ramen, cold by the time it reaches him, and tourist snacks from all over. That either of them would remember feels like plenty enough, since Lance never does.

Yellow very politely disagrees. "No way. I already knew I needed to talk to Silver about the stuff he eats but i'm not letting you avoid your birthday. It's a full decade, too, so at least _some_ celebration is in order," they add, looking at him in expectation. 

He must be forgetting something, but Yellow smiles like that’s all perfectly fine and gives no further hints. He sighs. "We've been walking for a while now, so will you at least tell me how much longer?" 

"Not too long! Just enjoy the view. The trees sound like they've missed you."

Of course they do. He’s missed this too, so much that he spent long afternoons straining to hear this very sound of the leaves in the breeze, ached willing himself not to think of it.

He doesn’t voice his discomfort with being here now, afraid the feeling would be taken away the moment he speaks it. Besides, Yellow would understand. He doesn’t want them to.

The Viridian holds no grudges. Instead, all of its life is reaching out to him, branches spreading safe and moss like goosebumps, and all the hush and all the noise there for them. _Welcome home_ , it says, and it catches against his skin, somewhere between an itch and a scrape.

"Um," he starts.

Yellow turns to him and stops humming along to the tune in the air. He hadn’t realised. They frown, not too concerned: they hadn’t either.

He doesn’t ask where they’re going, though, because his hair is already standing on end. The forest is buzzing an anthem and anticipation pinpricks the insides of his palms, making it hard to think. Nothing here is giving him a choice in the matter, not Yellow nor the space around him. Even if he tried to leave, every blade of grass would trip him up just to pull him back here.

In a few hours he will be thirty years old. Yellow, smiling again like they have all the answers and don't plan to give them out, will be twenty. Some kid, somewhere, will be ten years old and able to talk with Pokémon.

Here, somewhere around here, just about now, another Viridian child is joining their ranks. Lance and Yellow are coming to see her.

**

"This is the second time, come to think of it."

Lance is feeling neither conversational nor kind. "...having your 20th birthday?"

Yellow laughs. Leaves go aflutter, attentively taking in the sound, but they don’t let him off the hook so easily. "Well, it had been a short time before I met you." Lance flinches but Yellow doesn’t pause. "I was already 10 when Red disappeared. I got to meet the child before I had to leave."

Lance isn't sure what to say to that. Yellow isn’t trying to pick a fight. He wishes they were. "Good thing I waited, then," he says, trying to stare a hole in the sky that would suck him up and willing the ground instead to finally, finally open up beneath him. His words echo for long enough that he almost feels bad about it.

Yellow waits for the air to clear and then presses on. "I’m glad I didn’t miss it. It was a very special experience. I haven't really kept in touch with the kid, though, so I couldn't recruit her to come with us, though."

He doesn’t say anything. There's never a point to saying things out loud, not for people like them and not here. 

Yellow nods. "I knew where to find you."

**

They don’t have to look for the right house, they just know. It’s a place that, horribly, feels even more welcoming than Viridian itself, like a home is a home and they’re simply at the door again.

The mother is tired, but worried more so. Yellow was right to make them come so soon. The baby seems too calm, the mother says, fussing at her blankets. "I knew she was different from the beginning, but now she’s here and…” her lip trembles, looking over to her husband on the other side of the room. He looks just as worried.

“She barely cried, you know,” he says, absentmindedly trying to entertain their toddler at the same time. “It’s not good for babies to… is she sick? Will she-- be alright? Is there something you can do for her?” There isn’t. There’s not much more to do than explain, and hope that in another ten years the words are any consolation at all.

"She's--" he begins, but doesn’t know where to go with it. He looks at Yellow for help, but they’re also still thinking of the right words.

"--listening to it? I guess?" they say, under their breath, so only he can hear it.

They’re both stalling too much. Lance is feeling the parents' panic himself. He shuffles in his chair and Yellow stops muttering, raising their eyes to look at him, just as lost as he feels. How does anyone begin to explain _themselves_?

"Well, we can… talk to Pokémon, for starters.” He thinks about it. “It’s every ten years. Me, Yellow here… and now your daughter." The father looks at them, the toddler’s toy forgotten. Yellow smiles and nods, pretending to be helpful. "She can do the same thing as us."

The parents look at the baby instead, with less panic and more awe. Lance was only trying to ease them into the rest of the conversation, but it’s Yellow that keeps going.

"The forest chooses its children to protect itself. So, every ten years, a baby is born who can communicate with everything in it. Right now she's listening to the celebration of her birth." They think of something else to say but come up empty and turn to look at him instead like that much was meant to be perfectly satisfactory. _Was that alright?_ He could cry with all they left unsaid. He almost laughs.

A tiny hand reaches out from the blankets, along with the sounds of cooing. The mother fixes the blankets so more of the baby is showing, and Lance finds himself unable to tear his eyes away, even as he hears Yellow shuffle, and then a small whisper in his ear, "she's more wrinkly than you!"

He doesn't even have it in him to glare.

Tsubaki is small and alive and innocent, unharmed and unaware of what her duties will mean. Tsubaki's eyes simply blink at things around them like she’s taking them in, cataloguing them, and there is neither judgment nor forgiveness to be had. When she looks at Lance, he melts.

And then she starts crying.

Lance sits upright in his chair, only now realising he may have leaned too far forward. He didn’t do anything wrong, but because he is a parody of himself, his eyes dart towards Yellow.

The mother just smiles. "She's hungry."

He jumps a little, eager to get out of here, but Yellow taps his elbow. "Gifts first, remember?"

He wouldn’t have remembered to bring anything to begin with if Yellow hadn't insisted on stopping by the store. He had racked his mind about it and hadn’t caught what it was Yellow picked out, and he wonders about it just in time for Yellow to pull out an untidy stack of cards tied with string. Tsubaki’s father looks at it like he might cry. "That’s very thoughtful of you. Thank you."

Coupons. He's holding coupons and gift cards, Lance notices as the father tries to hold the papers out of Tsubaki's older brother's reach. It really is thoughtful. It’s the sensible thing to do. He looks at his own bouquet of flowers and knows Yellow won once again.

When the mother's eyes fall on the bouquet, though, she smiles. "Camellias for Tsubaki, huh… it's as if you knew. Well, I guess you must have. You didn't have to get us anything, the both of you, just coming here was very kind of you. You put our minds at ease. Thank you." Tsubaki's hand reaches out of the blanket once again for her mother’s fingers.

Yellow is next to Lance again, too quietly, and they put their hand on his back and give it a light push towards Tsubaki. He knows. He doesn’t need them to remind him. It’s just terrifying, a looming responsibility he’d wanted to leave behind with the rest of it, to kiss Tsubaki’s forehead and in all his rush say something he won’t remember in another 5 minutes, something about being protected and not worrying about the rest of it, meaningless, useless. Yellow, complicit, says nothing about this, though they heard him just fine.

**

_Be safe_ , he hears Yellow when it’s their turn to give their blessing. _It's_ each other _that we must protect. All the duty you will have is to be safe, and that duty is ours. Just as always._

They don’t look at him as they say it. In the small room curtained in young leaves, he can’t be certain, but he thinks Yellow's lips don't move.

**

They're lying on its welcoming floor then, still listening to Tsubaki’s song, looking at the sky go pink and purple and a dark, dark blue, watching the stars bloom one by one and feeling every cobweb in the making like it’s woven on their skin.

They don’t talk about it. Yellow simply thinks there’s nothing to be said. It’s still better than having to hear them say they’d forgiven him forever ago. He lets it go just for this one day.

"You know..."

Yellow hums at him to go on even before he pauses, uncertain how to proceed.

"This wasn't my first blessing either."

Yellow thinks about this for a few moments. "...Lance of the Viridian forest, should I take this to mean you came to visit me?"

"Well, I had waited a few days. …and it wasn’t my idea, it was..." He waves his hand around. They’ll get it. 

They're both quiet for a while. He remembers his blessing to them all too well. He’s failed every word of it.

Yellow snorts.

"What is it now?"

"Did you... did you wear the cape when you came to give your blessing?"

It’s dark. They don’t see him make a face, but nothing here has ever cared about keeping anything a secret. Yellow laughs at him.

"I was a kid, okay," he groans.

They laugh harder at that. Lance turns away to face the leaves, even though they must also be laughing. The wind combs his hair away too gently and he wishes, he wishes he could resent it. Maybe tomorrow.

He smiles as well. It’s the least he can do.

And Yellow says, "happy birthday, Lance,"

and Lance says, "happy birthday, Yellow."

**Author's Note:**

> shows up 5 years and 11 days late with a rewritten thing from forever ago
> 
> take care of yourself and the people around you, stay safe, all the love, if there are typos please let me know or laugh at me in secret. i won't know, i'm not a viridian kid


End file.
